Olympics

Olympic Update: NBC’s and China’s Clinic in What Not To Do

This tape delay is killing me. Really, NBC seems to have spent $894 million to make the New York audience happy. As for those of us that are so unfortunate to be living outside of the Eastern Time Zone, well, we’re pretty much screwed.

It sure is nice to be watching Friday Night Fights on ESPN, only to be told by their bottom-of-the-screen news flash that Michael Phelps got his seventh gold medal. I have actually gone out of my way to avoid the Internet, the news and as much of any type of sports on television as I can handle to try to watch “live” Olympics later that night. But they were showing medals on the bottom of the Red Sox game on NESN, ESPNews, and obviously all over the web.

While I realize that watching live boxing on ESPN is dangerous when trying to avoid results, I shouldn’t have this problem to begin with.

China, meanwhile, apparently faked the entire Opening Ceremonies, then cheated at gymnastics. Hell of a ship they’re running over there.

Let’s sum up again what NBC and China are doing, or have done:

• NBC forced the Olympic committee to move the gymnastics and swimming finals to the morning, despite the fact that most swimming events take place at night. Threatening to withdraw their nearly billion dollar deal, NBC made the Olympics cater to their needs to show these events in prime time in the United States.

  Here’s the problem — most of these events still don’t take place anywhere near prime time. The women’s individual gymnastics all-around didn’t air until after midnight. Not to spoil NBC’s genius idea, but midnight on the East is 9:00 PM on the West Coast. So instead of having late night on one coast and actual prime time on the other, they decided to show everything on a delay in the West so that all of us could have our prime time events after midnight.

  I understand, to an extent, the need to please your advertisers. It’s the only way that they can afford the Olympics. But the advertisers need to be told that live in the West Coast means that your big events are running between eight and nine at night. I’m not advertising exec, but actual prime time, actually live, has to get better ratings than after midnight on a tape delay.

  There is literally no reason in the world that NBC is airing the Olympics on a delay on the West Coast. Embarrassing.

• China and NBC mangled the Opening Ceremonies. It’s bad enough that they aired them on a 12 hour delay (on the East Coast), but what about the fake fireworks? Pathetic.

  Or the faked racial diversity? Even worse.

  Oh yeah, they also told the seven-year old girl that she couldn’t sing because she was too ugly. Really quality work on those Opening Ceremonies.

• How about China’s blatant cheating in gymnastics. Between the awful scoring and the 13-year olds, this is far worse than the skating scandal from Salt Lake City.
• The NBC announcers are painful. Most of them, at least. Aside from Teddy Atlas and Bob Papa doing boxing (outstanding), this is bad. They went out and hired nearly everyone that works for HBO, which is usually a good thing, but they are just not using them right. Cris Collinsworth has provided next to nothing, and really hasn’t been given much of a chance to. Mary Carillo is being relegated to fluff pieces. The folks calling softball and baseball games are horrible and uninformed. The gymnastics announcers were very good. The swimming guys are good, but tend to not shut up. Sometimes the pictures should tell the story, and all of the NBC announcers haven’t learned that.

  Little Bobby Costas is really starting to bug me. Between his one-sided attack on Internet media, to his ever-growing snobbery whenever he talks about sports, I just can’t take it anymore. He has taken condescension to a new level, and I now dislike watching him only for being himself. There isn’t even anything specific I dislike about him covering this Olympics. But he might as well be in New York right now, considering I don’t think I’ve seen him leave his booster seat in the Beijing NBC studio.

  Having said that, I loved him with Béla Károlyi when they were discussing gymnastics. Pure entertainment.

• The boxing scoring is just atrocious. I watch a lot of boxing, but this may as well be cricket, based on my unfamiliarity with what I’m watching. They should make coin flipping an Olympic event. That’s really about all this is. The scoring system that they are using this year is nothing short of a complete mystery. Thankfully, we have Papa and Atlas to call it how it is.
• Minimal graphics. More times than I can count, NBC didn’t show gymnasts scores, or the overall scores. They never showed the scoreboard as the scores were announced. They show the athletes reacting to the scores posted, then eventually the standings. In live sports, this is doing it the wrong way. We are watching with suspense, allow us to watch the scores as they happen.

This has got to be the most frustrating television sports event of my lifetime. Maybe I’m being greedy by demanding a top-notch product, but with what NBC paid for this, and for their media monopoly on this worldly event, I will continue to demand a better product.

It’s one thing to have a few glitches. This is a nightmare. Please ABC, CBS, FOX, ESPN or anyone else — outbid NBC so this doesn’t have to happen anymore.

I just wish we could ignore the Olympics as a country enough to make NBC change their ways, but unfortunately, they just don’t care.

There’s more that’s bothered me about this, but I’m just done for now. I’m sure I’ll touch on this subject again.

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